NYC soon to have no groceries

A new law proposed for New York City will allow citizens to upload videos of vehicles sitting with their engines idling, and the citizen will receive 50% of the collected fine, which for a tractor- trailer can range from $500 to 18,000 for a first offense.

Since over the road truckers MUST stop periodically by law for mandated rest periods, and the engine must be running to power air conditioning and other equipment, this law is posed to eliminate trucks from New York City.

Riot law review

Let's review the applicable rules: 

In Florida, deadly force may be used to protect oneself from death or serious bodily injury, or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony.

Forcible felony, according to 776.08, includes arson, aggravated assault, and the unlawful throwing, placing, or discharging a destructive device or bomb, and any other felony that involves the use or threat of force.

Throwing a Molotov cocktail is arson, which is a forcible felony. 

A Molotov cocktail is also considered to be a destructive device under 790.001.Throwing one is a forcible felony 

Participating in a riot whereby the participants are forcibly and violently attempting to destroy any building is a forcible felony under 870.03.

Throwing stones and rocks into an occupied structure is a forcible felony under 790.19.

A person who is occupying a vehicle that is forcibly and unlawfully being entered is presumed to be in reasonable fear for his life under 776.013.  A person who is attacked in his or her dwelling, residence, or vehicle has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and use or threaten to use force, including deadly force. 

This means that anyone who attempts to forcibly pull me from my vehicle may be lawfully engaged with lethal force. 

Cops react to noncompliance

Do you want to know why cops freak out when a person doesn't comply, and then attempts to access their vehicle? The following video is shown to nearly every US cop as an example:





Read all about what happened here.

Attempted suicide by cop

One of the cops in this video is an acquaintance of mine. The cops here showed remarkable restraint.

Security report, SeaWorld Orlando

Sea World Orlando's security was tested by me on four different occasions during a two year period, ending in the Spring of 2016. During each of those 4 occasions, I was legally carrying a handgun and successfully entered the park each time without being questioned or stopped for security in any way.

There was little to no security visible in the parking lot. Several unguarded access gates were noted to be locked with no security personnel visible nearby, but there were security cameras. To what extent they are monitored is unknown.

The park was inspecting all bags coming through the front gate. This inspection was cursory, and a bag with a hidden compartment would probably result in the ability to smuggle other items in, but this was not tested. Park employees were pulling some people from the line to be checked with a handheld magnetometer, but the check was poorly done.

There was an average of four police officers visible at the front gate, who were standing around shooting the breeze.

Security inside the park was limited to a few uniformed security officers.

Overall, it was easy to enter the park armed and wander about. The parking lot appeared virtually unguarded and unmonitored. A person who is carrying a weapon will likely not be discovered, as there is effectively no limit on the carrying of weapons.

Man who stopped stabbing not really a cop

The stabbing in Minnesota was carried out by an African Immigrant. He was stopped by a man named Jason Falconer, who the press is reporting is an off-duty police officer.

The truth that the press is not reporting is that he is actually a concealed carry advocate and owner of a Minnesota company called called Tactical Advantage; its website says the company “is a full-service range with range rental, range gun rental, retail sales, limited gunsmith service and stellar training.”

Falconer's biography on that site states that he is the former police chief of Albany, NY, and is still a part time officer and firearms instructor for that department. How can a man who lives and works in Minnesota be a part time police officer for Albany, a city which is 1300 miles away? My guess is that this allows him to carry weapons where us simple proles cannot, and may also allow him to own machine guns that are not allowed to be owned by mere mortals.

Either way, the press will continue to report that it was a cop, because the press admitting that a person with a CCW stopped a mass killing just isn't going to happen.

EDITED TO ADD: It looks like there is an Albany, MN. I retract the last part of this post, with apologies. Oops.

Supply and Demand

A bomb goes off in New York City. Thousands of people rush to get home, and call for an Uber car. This surge in demand causes all of the available drivers to be busy with fares. Now there are no available drivers, so Uber's automated systems recognize this and increase fares, passing the fare increase to the drivers, thus luring more drivers off the couch and into taking fares to alleviate the surge.

This is a classic demonstration of the iron law of supply and demand. As demand increases, the availability of a product decreases, and prices increase. This has the dual effect of both increasing supply (more drivers want a shot at delivering the product at the increased price) and reducing demand (fewer passengers willing to pay the increased price) until the system again reaches equilibrium. That is exactly how supply and demand works, and the law of supply and demand is inviolable. As long as there is a product which consumers demand, as well as those who would supply that product, the law applies.

Of course, that doesn't stop people from accusing Uber of profiteering. They don't stop to consider factors which are affecting prices, mostly because they are self absorbed and don't understand basic economics.

Reddit

A few years ago, I took a class on terrorism at a local college in pursuit of my degree in Public Safety. One of the things that I did for the class was plan a terrorist attack on a soft target in the area, and then see what steps should have been taken to prevent it. As a result, I saw that the security at these locations was there only for show. I continued to check other locations and saw how flimsy the security was, and used some of these checks as the basis for a post or two.

My recent post on being armed at Disney got linked to from Reddit. That link resulted in over 1,000 unique page visits, making it the second most popular post that I have ever written. That got me to thinking: I have been entering non permissive locations for years now, and I think that I am going to begin writing up reports on the security of non permissive locations. Here are the ground rules that I am setting up for this series:

1 I will not enter in violation of the law. When I enter places, understand that I am not breaking the law. I always try to use an actual weapon where legal, in places where it is illegal to have a weapon I have used analogs, things that appear to an x-ray machine or magnetometer to be a weapon, but upon actual visual inspection are obviously not a weapon.

2 I am not interesting in debating the basis for concealed carry. One of the biggest comments over on Reddit was how you don't need a gun at Disney or anywhere else, unless you are in a "bad" neighborhood. I think this is a rather naive position to take, but if you don't think you need to carry, then don't. Just don't try and stop me for choosing to carry. I would, however point out that Disney parks are a dangerous place, with even Federal law enforcement officers being kidnapped and carjacked there. Sometimes it is the Disney security guards themselves committing the crimes. Even the terrorist who was the shooter in Orlando had scouted Disney as a possible target. 

3 I also do not want to debate the morality of carrying against a property owner's wishes. I don't care what his wishes are. I don't owe him a thing, and I am free to ignore his wishes as I please, as long as I am following the law. 

Think of the above rules, and consider this:

A criminal or terrorist will bring a weapon in to these places, and doesn't care about the law, the owner's wishes, or whether or not concealed carry is a good idea. If I can legally sneak a weapon into these places, a criminal or terrorist could also do so illegally with the intent of killing, robbing, or kidnapping you. 

So, this will be a recurring feature here. Look for my upcoming posts.

Mordida

We are becoming more and more of a third world country every day. A building inspector charged a business owner $300 to inspect their business. I am sure that this is not the first time.

Mordida.

Armed in a Non permissive environment- Walt Disney World

I detest security theater. The security measures that have been put in place at various public venues have not done a thing to actually make us safer, and actually make us less safe. All these measures have done is make people FEEL safe, while providing no real safety. There is a lot of crime on the property of the theme parks, even being perpetrated by the very employees of the parks themselves, and not just a few times, either.

For at least the past ten years, I have tested the supposed security at local theme parks by entering the parks while legally armed. Year after year, they tighten procedures and make searches of the people entering these parks more an more intrusive, even to the point of using dogs. I have entered the theme parks while armed over 100 times, and I have only been caught once, and that was entering a Penn and Teller show in the Hard Rock Cafe at Universal Studios while armed with a 1911. I have since found out how to beat the security measures in place that night, and have routinely done so on more than a dozen occasions.

The theme parks began by conducting bag checks. That was trivial to beat: just carry a weapon on your person, and have no bag to check. Even so, carrying a gun in a bag was easy as well. For example, the bag checks at Universal Studios only checked people as they left the parking garage. People who valet parked, arrived by bus or taxi, or who entered the park by taking a water taxi from one of the  on property resort hotels were not subjected to the search.

Disney was no better.

Then last year, the parks announced that they would be adding magnetometers to the bag searches. I thought for sure that this would make entering the parks far more difficult, if not impossible. I was wrong. It proved to be a trivial exercise in getting past security with a firearm on my person. In fact, I have entered the theme parks since they began using magnetometers on no fewer than 15 different times, and have actually only passed through them three times, and they only caught the fact that I was armed once. This means that there is an 80% chance than an armed person will not be screened at all, and if he is, there is only a 33% chance that he will be caught. Think about those odds.

This weekend was no different. I went to the Disney parks to test the security. I was wearing khaki shorts, a polo shirt, and sneakers. I was carrying a Smith and Wesson Bodyguard with a spare magazine in a belly band, a 4 inch boot knife in a back pocket, and a container of pepper spray in a front pocket. This is 100% legal, since I have a concealed weapons permit.

At the Magic Kingdom, there was a bag inspection, but since I was not carrying a bag, I bypassed it. Beyond that, there were three magnetometers, but only one of them was being used. People were occasionally being pulled from the line and forced to walk through it, but the selection process was not random. Watching it for just a few minutes, it was obvious what was happening: anyone with a large untucked shirt, any sort of 511 pants, or other typical CCW clothing were being selected for the supposedly random searches. Since I have been carrying for a long time and do not wear clothing that obviously gives me away, I guess I am not suspicious enough to be selected.

Those who set off the magnetometer were then forced to go through secondary screening where they were checked with a hand wand. I have gone through this magnetometer three times, and set off the machine twice. The first time, I was caught and had to go out and leave my firearm in a locker in order to enter the show. I have not been caught since.

Why? Because the second time that I set it off, I was wearing the firearm in a Thunderwear holster, and when I was wanded, the guard noticed that I was wearing a large belt buckle. (Show them what they expect to see, and they will usually buy into it) They are not cops, and do not have qualified immunity against lawsuits, so cannot ask you to disrobe or frisk you without incurring some significant legal liability. Most of them are either mall ninjas, or idiots who are not all that motivated to do more than make a few bucks while doing as little as possible.

This is where I do have a question. As a backup to the unarmed security at Disney, there are off duty Orange County Deputies who are working there on the Disney payroll as armed security. They wear their county issued uniforms, carry county issued badges, radios,  and guns, while carrying out private employment. What can they legally do or say in the support of this private regulation?

This is why I have a real problem with Disney. They are both a private entity and a local government. The Deputies in this case are both acting a cops and as security, and all parties here change hats in order to take advantage of the powers and rights of both, while neatly dodging the legal responsibilities, restrictions, and constitutional protections of both. This is fascism, pure and simple. I will continue to resist it as much as I possibly can.

Democrats with guns

A man decides to get drunk and engage in target practice in the backyard of his suburban neighborhood.  Bullets fly into his neighbors' homes. The usual suspects line up to protest guns. It turns out that he is a Democrat.

Tool

This film actually illustrates one of the fundamental problems that I have always had with the Libertarian party.






They are called illegal immigrants because they broke the law when they immigrated. The term has exactly nothing to do with race or ethnicity. Whether it was illegal decades ago or not doesn't matter. They immigrated in an illegal manner, and just because you happen to disagree with the law doesn't make someone a racist for using the term.

Helicopter parenting

Many parents are tempted to try and solve all of their child's problems, but in some cases doing so is actually harmful to the child, as they never learn to do things and solve problems for themselves. Let me explain:

One of the most difficult things for high school chemistry students to learn is how to set up conversion problems. To make learning this method easier, I begin by showing them how to do it, and then over a period of weeks I assign them practice worksheets with sample problems. For the first few weeks, the problems are very easy. They start off with problems like converting a $5 bill into quarters, progress to converting grams to kilograms, and then once they have mastered the easier problems, we begin the more difficult ones. Each problem must use the proper number of significan figures, and all problems MUST be in scientific notation.

I require that each student show their work, so that I can monitor their learning progress and offer guidance when they make mistakes. Points are taken off for various mistakes, with the largest deductions coming for not showing your work, or setting the problem up improperly. Minor math mistakes result in small deductions, because I am more concerned with mastering the methodology than whether or not a student can tell me how many quarters he can get for $5.

Every year, I get a student who either decides that he can take shortcuts like simply moving the decimal point, or using a calculator to do the entire problem. Each of those methods work on the easier problems they face in the beginning, but they do not work with the more difficult problems, and as those problems get more difficult, the student falls behind his peers and grades begin to slide.

This year was no exception. I had a child who simply turned in a 7 problem homework assignment without showing work on three problems, showing the incorrect method on two problems, and a host of other, more minor errors such as failing to show units in the answer, and failing to use proper scientific notation. His  parent argued vociferously that those errors don't matter as long as the student gets the correct numerical answer. I spend two hours typing up an explanation of my grading system, and pointing out that this homework assignment was less than 0.05% of the student's overall grade, and the grade on this assignment was merely a feedback mechanism for the student.

The parent was having none of it. He insisted that I give the student full credit "for making an honest attempt" at completing the homework, and that listing the answer without showing his work should be good enough, because in the business world, it is results that count. I told him that his feelings on this were immaterial, and further told him that the grading system in my class would not change. He then became hostile, and said that as a parent, it was up to him how his child would be educated, called me "obtuse" and then said he was going to the authorities (principal, school board) to have me fired.

He then transferred his child to a much easier, less challenging class, where this child will be bored out of his mind.

But at least they aren't my problem any longer.